Managing Work Groups and Teams PDF

# Chapter 13: Managing Work Groups and Teams - **Problem-solving:** Most popular type of team; comprises knowledge workers who gather to solve a specific problem and then disband. - **Management team:** Consists mainly of managers from various functions like sales and production; coordinates work a...

# Chapter 13: Managing Work Groups and Teams - **Problem-solving:** Most popular type of team; comprises knowledge workers who gather to solve a specific problem and then disband. - **Management team:** Consists mainly of managers from various functions like sales and production; coordinates work among other teams. - **Work team:** An increasingly popular type of team; work teams are responsible for the daily work of the organization; when empowered, they are self-managed teams. - **Virtual team:** A newer type of work team whose members interact in a virtual arena; members enter and leave the network as needed and may take turns serving as leader. Team comprised of people from remote worksites who work together online. - **Quality circle:** Declining in popularity, quality circles, comprising workers and supervisors, meet intermittently to discuss workplace problems. ## Role Structures - **Role:** The parts that individuals play in groups in helping the group reach its goals. - **Task specialist role:** Concentrating on getting the group's tasks accomplished. - **Socioemotional role:** Providing social and emotional support to others on the team. - **Role structures:** The set of defined roles and interrelationships among those roles that the group members define and accept. A result of role episodes in which the expected role is translated and defined into the enacted role. - **Role ambiguity**, arises when the sent role is unclear, and the individual does not know what is expected of him or her. Unclear instructions or lack of information. - **Role conflict**, occurs when the messages and cues comprising the sent role are clear but contradictory or mutually exclusive. Finish the assignment by Friday, but no overtime allowed. - **Role overload**, occurs when expectations for the role exceed the individual's capabilities to perform. Employee has several tasks that are all urgent. - **Role conflict:** - **Interrole conflict:** The result of a conflict between roles. - **Intrarole conflict:** Caused by conflicting demands from different sources. - **Intrasender conflict:** Arises when a single source sends contradictory messages. - **Person-role conflict:** Is the discrepancy between role requirements and an individual's values, attitudes, and needs. ## The Nature of Conflict - **Conflict:** Disagreement among two or more individuals, groups, or organizations. While generally viewed as something to be avoided, conflict can be beneficial. Promotes research, study, analysis, and discussion; must be cordial and constructive. ## Managing Conflict ### Stimulating Conflict: Conflict can have negative and positive consequences. - Increasing competition among individuals and teams. - Differential rewards lead to conflict; those that are fair and equitable are constructive. - Hiring outsiders to shake things up. Promotes a new perspective, but may lead to resentment. - Change established procedures. May cause resentment and turnover of valued employees. ### Managing conflict: - Stimulate conflict for constructive ends. - Control conflict before it gets out of hand. - Resolve conflict if it does get out of hand. ## Controlling Conflict: Ways to control conflict include: - Expand the resource base. - Enhance coordination. - Managerial hierarchy, rules, and procedures, liaison, task forces, integrating departments. - Focus on higher-level goals instead of lower-level conflicts. - Match personalities and work habits of employees. ## Resolving Conflict Conflict must be addressed if it is to serve constructive purposes and prevent destructive consequences. Ways to resolve include: - Compromise. - Interpersonal problem solving. - Allow each party to confront the other. Requires maturity on each side. - Alternative dispute resolution. Team or other employees arbitrate conflict. ## Negotiation: The process in which two or more parties (people or groups) reach agreement on an issue even though they have different preferences regarding that issue. ### Approaches to negotiation: - **Psychological:** Concentrates on personality traits of negotiators. - **Situational:** Context within which negotiation takes place. - **Mathematical:** Game theory; used to predict outcomes of negotiation situations. - **Cognitive:** Behavioral approaches, tries to predict when negotiators will depart from perfect rationality. # Chapter 14: Basic elements of Control ## Types of Control: - **Physical resources:** Inventory management, quality control, and equipment control. - **Human resources:** Selection and placement, training, and development, performance appraisal, and compensation. - **Information resources:** Sales and marketing forecasts, environmental analysis, public relations, production scheduling, and economic forecasting. - **Financial resources:** Managing capital funds and cash flow, collection, and payment of debts. ## Levels of control: - **Operations control:** Focuses on the processes that the organization uses to transform resources into products or services. - **Financial control:** Concerned with the organization's financial resources. - **Structural control:** Concerned with how the elements of the organization's structure are serving their intended purpose. - **Strategic control:** Focuses on how effectively the organization's strategies are succeeding in helping the organization meet its goals. ## Steps in the Control Process - **Establishing standards:** - **Control standard:** A target against which subsequent performance will be compared. - Should be expressed in measurable terms. - Should be consistent with organizational goals. - Should be identifiable indicators of performance. - **Measuring performance:** - Performance measurement is an ongoing process. - Performance measures must be valid indicators of performance. - **Comparing performance against standards:** - Define what is a permissible deviation from the performance standard. - Utilize the appropriate timetable for measurement. - **Considering corrective action:** - Maintain the status quo (do nothing). - Correct the deviation to bring operations into compliance with the standard. - Change the standard if it was set too high or too low. ## Operations Control: - Operations control: Focuses on the processes the organization uses to transform resources into products or services. - **Preliminary control:** Attempts to monitor the quality or quantity of financial, physical, human, and information resources before they actually become part of the system. - **Screening control:** Relies heavily on feedback processes during the transformation process. Effective way to promote employee participation and catch problems early in the transformation process. - **Postaction control:** Monitors the outputs or results of the organization after the transformation process is complete. ## Financial Control - **Financial control:** Concerned with the organization’s financial resources. - **Control of financial resources:** (e.g., revenues, shareholder investment) as they: - Flow into the organization - Are held by the organization as working capital and retained earnings. - Flow out of the organization as payment of expenses ## Budgetary Control - **Budgets:** A plan expressed in numerical terms. Budgets may be established at any organizational level. Budgets are typically for one year or less. Budgets may be expressed in financial terms, units of output, or other quantifiable factors. - **Purposes of budgets:** - Help coordinate resources and projects. - Help define the established standards for control. - Provide guidelines about resources and expectations. - Evaluate the performance of managers and organizational units. - **Financial budget:** Indicates where organization will get cash and how to use it. - **Operating budget:** Outlines what quantities of products or services organization intends to create, and what resources will be used to create them. - **Nonmonetary budget:** Includes units of outputs, hours of direct labor, machine hours. Most commonly used at lower levels of the organization. ## Developing Budgets - Top management generally issues a call for budget requests. - Each operating unit submits request to division head. - Division head integrates and consolidates all requests into one overall division budget. - Forwarded to budget committee, usually composed of top managers. - Duplications and inconsistencies are corrected. - Budget committee, controller, and CEO review and agree on overall budget. ## Strengths and weaknesses of Budgeting **Strengths**: - Budgets facilitate effective operational controls. - Budgets facilitate coordination and communication between departments. - Budgets establish records of organizational performance, which can enhance planning. **Weaknesses**: - Budgets can hamper operations if applied too rigidly. - Budgets can be time-consuming to develop. - Budgets can limit innovation and change. ## Other Tools for Financial Control - **Financial statement:** A profile of some aspect of an organization's financial circumstances. - **Balance sheet:** List of assets and liabilities of an organization at a specific point in time. - **Income statement:** A summary of financial performance over a period of time, usually one year.